Trouble logging in?If you can't remember your password or are having trouble logging in, you will have to reset your password. If you have trouble resetting your password (for example, if you lost access to the original email address), please do not start posting with a new account, as this is against the forum rules. If you create a temporary account, please contact us right away via Forum Support, and send us any information you can about your original account, such as the account name and any email address that may have been associated with it.

Thingle is using the term "islamism" to denote extreme wingnut whackjobs who seem to have lost their Koran or just snipped out bits to justify themselves. I don't think that's probably the best term choice since it really means "someone who is of Islam"
We need some term that defines all such wingnuts irrespective of religion (because really there's not much discernible difference - the level of violence seems more predicated on other factors or the lack of them).

Until we find one, for me at least -- "whackjobs", "nimrods", "wingnuts", "fruitcakes" seems to do.

Thingle is using the term "islamism" to denote extreme wingnut whackjobs who seem to have lost their Koran or just snipped out bits to justify themselves. I don't think that's probably the best term for such nimrods We need some term that defines all such wingnuts irrespective of religion (because really there's not much discernible difference - the level of violence seems more predicated on other factors or the lack of them).

Until we find one, for me at least -- "whackjobs", "nimrods", "wingnuts", "fruitcakes" seems to do.

China said Thursday it might appeal a World Trade Organization ruling that told Beijing to ease restrictions on imported movies, music and books in its latest trade dispute with Washington.

The Commerce Ministry insisted Beijing does not hamper imports of media products, despite Wednesday's decision by a WTO panel of experts that it violates free-trade rules by forcing such products to be routed through Chinese state-owned companies.

"The Chinese side will conscientiously assess the expert group's ruling and does not rule out the possibility of an appeal," ministry spokesman Yao Jian said in a written statement. "The channels for China's import market for published materials, movies and music are completely unimpeded," the statement said.

__________________

"If ignorance is bliss, then why aren't more people happy?" -- Misc.

Currently listening: Nadda
Currently reading: Procrastination for the win!
Currently playing: "Quest of D", "Border Break" and "Gundam Senjou no Kizuna".
Waiting for: "Shining Force Cross"!

The terror suspects on trial for plotting attacks against American targets in Germany claim their actions were driven by hatred against a country they believe is waging war against Islam. The men say their targets were US soldiers -- and they wanted to kill many of them.

At the time al-Qaida attacked the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, Fritz Gelowicz was still opposed to the act of terror. But a little over a year later, the young man from southern Germany, who converted to Islam at the age of 16, was already determined to "someday take part in the jihad." He says he was motivated by the United States' "unconditional support" for Israel. Gelowicz felt there was "a war by the USA against Islam."

Gelowicz, 29, has been sitting in the dock since June as the main defendant in the so-called "Sauerland Cell" trial against four homegrown German jihadists who are accused of planning a series of bomb attacks in Germany in the fall of 2007.

Authorities arrested the men in September 2007 in the town of Medebach-Oberschledorn in the Sauerland region of western German after uncovering the terror plot. At the time, prosecutors claim three of the defendants were trying to convert hydrogen peroxide into explosive material in a rented vacation home. Gelowicz has already hinted that the men were planning to carry out an attack at the start of October, around the time Germany's parliament was set to vote on an extension of the mandate of the military's deployment in Afghanistan.

The four accused -- Gelowicz, Daniel Schneider, Adem Yilmaz and Atilla Selek -- have already confessed. The testimony they gave to officials at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in June, July and August fills more than 1,100 pages. On Monday, the men began to testify publicly on the stand in their trial at a higher regional court in Düsseldorf.

It's the first time that all the members of a terror cell have revealed their inner workings. Investigators have never before been given such comprehensive information about the creation of a terror plot, training in terror camps in Pakistan's Waziristan region or the obscure Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), the Uzbek terror group on whose behalf Gelowicz and his accomplices were apparently acting. That the suspects have been so open probably has to do with the fact that they have been given the prospect of lighter sentences if they cooperate. Generally, investigators have been astonished by their openness.

'We Wanted to Kill Many'

The confessions have also shed light on another aspect of the case: the suspects' unconditional hatred of the US. Although they wanted to strike in Europe, their main intended targets were American soldiers. "We didn't want to kill two or three soldiers, but rather many," Gelowicz told the court on Monday.

Gelowicz gave particularly vivid testimony to the BKA about how he quickly got the feeling after 9/11 that the US was waging a war against Islam -- and that this was happening in his own backyard. He told investigators he felt that the war on terror had come within just meters' reach of him in 2004. He described a man who used to sit with his children inside a Muslim prayer room that Gelowicz frequented in his hometown, the Bavarian city of Neu-Ulm, noting that one day the man vanished. Gelowicz later learned from a friend that the man had been kidnapped by the CIA.

It turns out that the story was true. The man he spoke of was Khaled el-Masri, a German-Lebanese man who had been kidnapped by the US intelligence service in Macedonia in late December 2003 and taken to Afghanistan. There, he was detained and interrogated for five months before the case was found to be one of mistaken identity.

'Targeted Retaliation'

Adem Yilmaz also told the BKA that it had mainly been the excesses in the US "war against terror" that had pushed him to take the path to militancy. An attack against US soldiers in Germany, he said, would be "targeted retaliation." He added that the actions "would please detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and also at Guantanamo. That was the most important thing to me." The attacks were also intended as a protest against what "these pigs" were doing to innocent people in places like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Yilmaz called it a "defensive jihad."

Interestingly, the four defendants didn't start out with the intention of committing terrorist attacks. On the contrary, Gelowicz and Yilmaz claimed they initially wanted to go to the front as fighters, preferably in Iraq. However, they were not successful in their attempt to make contact with the appropriate middlemen during a stay in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

The most recent row erupted after an editorial at the Investors Business Daily (IBD) launched an attack on the British National Health Service (NHS), as a warning against what could happen if the US adopted such a model.

"The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof are legendary," the article said. "The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror movie script."

The article's author went on to assert that "people such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman quickly pointed out, Prof Hawking was born in the UK, and has lived and worked there for his entire life.

And UK newspapers the Guardian and Daily Telegraph reported Prof Hawking as saying that he "wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS".

All together everyone.... EPIC UTTER FACEPALM!

OMG, how stupid are these people? They go so far as to lie that Prof Hawkings would die under the UK's NHS health care plan when the Professor himself is a UK citizen & has manage to live long thanks to NHS healthcare plan.

Seriously, what is wrong for having a universal health care plan? I been to Brunei which does have a universal health care for all it's citizens no matter their status including foreigners working in that country, they also treat their patients in anyway from giving medicines for coughs to operations. Best part is that the citizens don't have pay anything since it's free coz the government pays for it. After seeing the benefits for having a Universal Health care plan in countries like the UK & France in the documentary "Sicko", aren't the benefits of these plans what Americas need the most for the good health & welfare of it's citizens or the Republicans, Greedy Corporations & Conservatives just don't care & would rather save millions of dollars then people's lives?

it's citizens or the Republicans, Greedy Corporations & Conservatives just don't care & would rather save trillions of dollars then people's lives?

Fixed that for you. And that is quite an underestimated figure. Remember how much those crooks in Congress predicted the cost of the Iraq War? 1-2 billions. What a joke.

Of course, the intentions are all nice and sincere; the only problem is we cannot afford it. I give credit for Obama for his mentioning Medicare and Medicaid being unsustainable though. Man, he didn't even mention what he would do about it but angry beneficiaries have already flexed their muscles and tried to shot down the whole health reform. This is ridiculous even though I don't agree with the liberal approach to tackling the problem.

You believe that the war would only cost 1 billion dollars? I won't count on it. Besides, Iraq's oil producing capacity has been kept low.

WWI costed 1 million per day in 1916. How much do you think Desert Storm costed?

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Search-and-rescue officials in this devastated village in southern Taiwan said Thursday as many as 600 residents were either buried or swept away in massive mudslides caused by Typhoon Morakat earlier this week, and that there is no prospect of finding more survivors here.

So IS there a consensus on what the term "Islamists" means? Just linguistically it looks like it covers anyone who is "of Islam" (which makes it terrible to use for defining the wingnut fringe). If Muslims and those who practice the faith of Islam themselves use the term to label the fringe nuts... then well.... okay then. Though I guarantee Christians will misunderstand it to mean "all of those people".